Islamabad, Pakistan – Thousands of people have attended a rally in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore demanding basic rights for ethnic Pashtun citizens and others.

Manzoor Pashteen, the leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), addressed protesters on Sunday, calling for an end to enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and other alleged rights abuses committed by Pakistan’s military in its war against the Taliban.

“Pakistan’s constitution says that if anyone has committed a crime, arrest them and bring them before the courts within 24 hours,” said Pashteen.

“But thousands of Pashtuns have been killed extrajudicially.”

Pashteen, a native of the South Waziristan tribal district, once the birthplace of the Pakistan Taliban, led a movement that has expanded across the country in recent weeks to hold the military and government accountable for alleged excesses committed by security personnel.

The rally on Sunday was held in defiance of a government ban.

The provincial government denied permission for the rally “due to specific threats to the security of organisers of PTM”, according to a statement.

Meanwhile, the PTM, despite drawing thousands of supporters to its rallies, has received little coverage from Pakistan’s news television and print media.

Opinion articles on the group have been removed from several newspapers’ websites in recent days.

On Sunday, Pashteen appeared to blame Pakistan’s powerful military for the media blackout.

“Right now, why are there restrictions on the media, on their lips to be sealed?” asked Pashteen.

“They want to be able to continue to disappear people, to kill them extrajudicially, to establish their own rule rather than that of the constitution.”

Manzoor Pastheen (C) called for an end to enforced disappearances [Arif Ali/ AFP]

The army has ruled the country for roughly half of its 70-year history since independence from Britain. Its decade-long war against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has centred mainly on ethnic Pashtun areas.

While public criticism of the army is rare, the PTM’s rallies have been marked by the openness of its leaders to call out the security forces.

For its part, the army has been critical of the movement.

Last week, army chief General Qamar Bajwa said the protests were “engineered” by foreign forces, and said his concern was they could reverse the military’s gains against armed groups.

Pashteen denied the claim on Sunday, saying the PTM was “not anti-Pakistan” and was only demanding constitutional rights for the Pashtuns, who make up 15 percent of Pakistan’s 207 million people.

Those attending the rally said it had been a rare event for Lahore, the political heartland of the ruling PML-N political party.

Protesters managed to circumvent the apparent media blackout by posting live video streams on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

]]>http://dawatmedia.com/world-news/thousands-rally-in-pakistans-lahore-for-pashtun-rights/feed/0In Pakistan, a young Pashtun man was killed by police. Another has risen to lead a movementhttp://dawatmedia.com/asia/in-pakistan-a-young-pashtun-man-was-killed-by-police-another-has-risen-to-lead-a-movement/
http://dawatmedia.com/asia/in-pakistan-a-young-pashtun-man-was-killed-by-police-another-has-risen-to-lead-a-movement/#respondSat, 21 Apr 2018 19:23:59 +0000http://dawatmedia.com/?p=1560By Pamela Constable and Haq Nawaz Khan

In a rare public challenge to Pakistan’s powerful armed forces, thousands of Pashtuns rallied April 8 in the northwestern city of Peshawar to call for an end to abuses by the police and military. (Abdul Majeed/AFP/Getty Images)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The slight, sad-faced man of 26, in a plain white tunic and a red embroidered cap, might seem miscast as the emerging leader of millions of ethnic Pashtuns and the voice of pent-up grievances that this struggling tribal minority has accumulated in the years since the Cold War arrived in next-door Afghanistan a generation ago.

But when Manzoor Pashteen took the stage at a recent rally in this Pashtun heartland city, the self-effacing veterinarian was transformed into an impassioned firebrand. He demanded that Pakistan’s security forces produce hundreds of missing detainees and stop harassing residents of his native Pashtun tribal belt, where conflicts with Taliban militants have been raging for years.

Thousands of supporters cheered and chanted songs including “What is this freedom?,” a popular protest ballad about wartime repression. The emotional crowd included students and professionals drawn by social media, and burqa-covered tribal women carrying posters of husbands or brothers who were seized in security raids and never seen again.

The rally on April 8 was a pivotal moment for the Pashtun Protection Movement, known by its Urdu initials PTM. Once a tiny group that denounced abuses in the northwest tribal area, it burst onto the national scene in January after Naquibullah Mehsud, a young Pashtun man in distant Karachi, was shot dead in a police anti-terrorism operation.

A surge of anger swept Pashtun communities across the country. For the first time, this scattered and struggling populace found common cause, especially via social media, raising the specter of a nationalist uprising in the minority of 40 million. Many Pashtuns have long dreamed of taking back a chunk of Pakistan that was arbitrarily cut off from Afghanistan by the British a century ago.

Pashteen and his budding movement leaped into the fray. He organized a 10-day sit-in at the Islamabad Press Club, bringing together Pashtuns to denounce extrajudicial killings, disappearances and other official abuses. Since then, the movement has grown rapidly, drawing large and excited crowds to rallies, while Pashteen’s red cap has become a symbol of rebellion on social media.

The crowd at the April 8 rally chanted anti-military slogans as speakers demanded an end to forced “disappearances” and harassment by authorities. (Abdul Majeed/AFP/Getty Images)

“Pashtun discontent has been like lava, bubbling along for years and waiting to erupt,” Afrasiab Khattak, a former senator from the Pashtun-based Awami National Party, said in an interview last week. By building links with large but unorganized Pashtun communities in Karachi and Quetta in the southwest, Khattak wrote Saturday in the Nation newspaper, Pashteen’s Peshawar-based movement “has already become a political force to be reckoned with.”

Pakistan’s Pashtuns have borne the brunt of cross-border conflicts that have pitted Pakistani troops against both Afghan Taliban insurgents and domestic militant groups. Commingled with a huge Afghan refugee population, repeatedly displaced by fighting and constantly crisscrossing the Afghan border, Pashtuns have often been stereotyped as criminals, insurgents and tribal terrorists.

Pashteen and his associates, largely young and educated Pakistanis who grew up in the chaos and routine violence of war, say they seek only justice under the law and the constitution, not to provoke ethnic unrest or secession. They take inspiration from nonviolent activists of the past, especially Bacha Khan, a Pashtun independence leader who worked with Mahatma Gandhi in India before the partition that created Pakistan in 1947.

But their explosion onto the national scene has aroused suspicion and concern in some quarters, especially in the powerful state security apparatus, which has been startled and angered by Pashteen’s accusations. His most provocative slogan charges that “the uniform is behind terrorism.” Military officials insist they have worked hard to eliminate terrorism from Pakistani soil, while U.S. officials accuse Pakistan of harboring Taliban insurgents.

“The Taliban are the product of the military. Our people have been caught between them for years, and they have suffered endless abuse and humiliation,” Pashteen said in an interview last week. He described a litany of abuse in the conflict-afflicted tribal areas, from soldiers confiscating a poor man’s chickens to insurgents brutally enforcing Islamic rules. “We want peace, and cruelty from either the army or the Taliban is not peace,” he said.

Publicly, the military has responded with mixed signals. Officials agreed to a few of the PTM’s demands, such as ending a requirement that anyone entering the militarized border tribal areas must present a special citizenship ID card. The army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, met with Mehsud’s family in Peshawar and vowed to bring justice, but he also warned that “engineered protests” would not be tolerated, a clear reference to the April 8 rally.

Behind the scenes, critics allege that security agencies have pressured mainstream Pakistani media not to report on the movement’s events, which have received almost no television coverage. They said government workers have been warned not to attend its rallies, and that security agencies are behind a competing spate of rallies where speakers have denounced Pashteen’s movement as treasonous and alleged that it is backed by Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies.

The new Pashtun movement has received an outpouring of support from Afghans, including a strong endorsement from President Ashraf Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun. But this has only made the movement more controversial, because relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan are tense. Both have repeatedly accused each other of sponsoring cross-border insurgent and terrorist attacks.

Pashtun political parties in Pakistan, on the other hand, have reacted warily to the nascent movement, partly out of fear of competition and partly because of concern that it could sabotage their longtime efforts to succeed within the formal political system, especially a campaign to bring full legal and political rights to the neglected, federally controlled tribal areas by merging them with the rest of Pakistan.

A woman from a Pashtun tribal area holds a photo of her husband, a factory worker who has been missing since he was detained by the army in 2015. (Pamela Constable/The Washington Post)

The Awami National Party, the country’s largest and oldest Pashtun party, has been especially critical. It recently removed two of Pashteen’s close associates from party posts after they refused to leave his movement. One former party official has worked to bring victimized tribal women to speak at PTM rallies — both an extraordinary departure from conservative Pashtun culture and a rare threat to security forces that are widely popular with the public and have long justified mass raids and detentions in the name of quelling Islamist terrorism.

On April 8, a woman whose face was covered by a burqa came to the stage and told her story to the spellbound crowd. In an interview last week, she recounted again how her husband, a factory worker, had been detained by soldiers with no explanation in 2015, how she went to many army and police facilities but learned nothing, and how she has struggled to support her children alone ever since.

“My husband worked from morning until night to feed us. If he did anything wrong, he should be taken to court,” said the woman, 30, who gave her name as Basroza and said she had never been to school. “I just want to know if he is dead or alive. This way, it’s like he was never even born.”

]]>http://dawatmedia.com/asia/in-pakistan-a-young-pashtun-man-was-killed-by-police-another-has-risen-to-lead-a-movement/feed/0Pakistani court bans ousted PM Sharif from politics for lifehttp://dawatmedia.com/world-news/pakistani-court-bans-ousted-pm-sharif-from-politics-for-life/
http://dawatmedia.com/world-news/pakistani-court-bans-ousted-pm-sharif-from-politics-for-life/#respondFri, 13 Apr 2018 09:13:34 +0000http://dawatmedia.com/?p=1538In this file photograph taken on June 5, 2013, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrives to inspect a guard of honour during a welcoming ceremony at the Prime Minister’s House in Islamabad. (AFP Photo)

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday declared that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ineligible to hold a public office for life, court records and local media reported.

The ruling, which has shut the doors of politics for the three-time premier, and for other politicians, including the secretary general of the main opposition party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Jahangir Khan Tareen for life, was unanimously announced by a five-member bench led by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar.

Sharif had been disqualified by the top court in July last year over the Panama Papers scandal. Tareen too was disqualified in December 2017 for hiding assets and owning an offshore company.

“This is another sequel of judgments, which have been given against elected public representatives in the past. And the people of Pakistan have always rejected these judgments,” Information Minister Maryam Aurangzeb told reporters outside the Supreme Court.

Along with his daughter and other family members, Sharif, whose party came into power in a landslide victory in the 2013 general election, is already facing three corruption cases, which, he claims, are “cooked up” and aimed at ousting him and his party from politics.

In April 2016, Sharif’s eldest son, Hussain Nawaz, admitted in an interview with a local Pakistani channel that his family owned the offshore companies and the apartments in London.

He insisted the transactions were all legal and refused to make his assets public, claiming that such a move could harm his business interests.

The Panama Papers released by Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in April last year highlighted the involvement of various business ans political personalities , among them 11 current and former national leaders, claiming they worked with the firm Mossack Fonseca to establish shadow companies for global transactions and money laundering.

The revelation sent shockwaves across the world, resulting in the resignation of Iceland Premier Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At first, the killing last month of Naqeebullah Mehsud — an aspiring model shot by the police in Karachi who claimed afterward that he was a Taliban militant — seemed merely the latest in a long series of abuses carried out by the authorities against ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan.

But Mr. Mehsud’s case has proved different. The 27-year-old’s killing, in what appears to have been a staged gun battle, has prompted a protest movement led by young Pashtuns from the tribal areas in the country’s northwest, where they have long been the targets of military operations, internal displacement, ethnic stereotyping and abductions by the security forces.

Last week, a social-media-savvy group of young Pashtuns organized a sit-in in Islamabad, the capital, promoting it with the hashtag #PashtunLongMarch. As of Tuesday, the demonstration’s sixth day, at least 5,000 Pashtuns from the tribal areas and other parts of the country had joined, and members of all major Pakistani political parties had declared their support.

“Certainly, this kind of organized struggle for Pashtun rights, reforms and resources has not been seen in years and years,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, the Peshawar-based editor of The News, a Pakistani newspaper. “The people of the tribal areas have had pent-up feelings of resentment and anger at their treatment by the state for decades,” he added. “Naqeebullah’s killing was just the tipping point.”

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, which border Afghanistan, are governed under regulations dating from the era of British colonial rule. Pakistani courts and Parliament have no jurisdiction there; instead, they are ruled by a “political agent” appointed by the central government. Pashtuns and others living in the tribal areas have few rights and can be exiled, their homes and businesses razed, and members arrested en masse over minor transgressions.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the tribal areas — particularly South Waziristan, where Mr. Mehsud was from, and North Waziristan — became a front line of the war on terrorism, as Al Qaeda and other groups took refuge there. Pashtuns in the tribal areas suffered both from militant attacks and from crackdowns by the army, and those who fled to other parts of Pakistan — like Karachi, in Mr. Mehsud’s case — say persecution followed them.

“Thousands of young Pashtun boys have disappeared in the last decade and a half, picked up from their homes and universities and streets in the name of curbing militancy,” said Farhad Ali, the 24-year-old vice chairman of the Fata Youth Jirga, one of the organizations leading the Islamabad protests. “We want all these young men to be produced before a court of law and concrete evidence presented that they have committed any crime.”

Demonstrators in Islamabad, Pakistan, last week. The police shooting of Naqeebullah Mehsud, an aspiring model, was “the tipping point” for ethnic Pashtuns angry about years of mistreatment by the state, a Pakistani newspaper editor said. CreditB.K. Bangash/Associated Press

“This is one of our major demands: Stop this stereotyping of Pashtuns as militants,” Mr. Ali said. “Stop imposing curfew in our areas every time there is any untoward event in another part of the country. Let us live in peace, please.”

The demonstrators, who have set up tents outside the National Press Club in Islamabad, are also demanding the arrest of Rao Anwar, a Karachi police commander who has been accused of killing Mr. Mehsud and who is now on the run.

They also say they want the army to clear land mines from the tribal areas, particularly the South Waziristan district. Mr. Ali said that since 2009, more than 35 people had been killed by land mines in South Waziristan.

Mr. Mehsud, 27, was killed in what appears to have been a staged gun battle.CreditMehsud Family, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“I wanted to do something with my life, I wanted to become someone, but look at me,” said Islam Zeb, from South Waziristan, who took part in the Islamabad protest. Mr. Zeb said he had been blinded in a land mine blast that cost his brother his hand.

“If a soldier is wounded in a land mine explosion, entire families are arrested, people disappear without a trace,” Mr. Zeb added.

The Pakistani Army’s media wing denied that the army had ever laid mines in the tribal areas, saying that militants had done so. But it said that the army would send 10 demining teams to South Waziristan immediately.

Other officials were also quick to assure the demonstrators that they had been heard. Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, a government minister who met with protest leaders, said the government fully supported their demands. But he declined to say when they would be met.

Manan Ahmed Asif, a professor of history at Columbia University, called the tribal areas “a geography outside the laws of the nation,” where both militant groups and the army had found that “violence could be meted out with little regard to its inhabitants.”

At least 70 percent of the region’s five million people live in poverty, the literacy rate is just 10 percent for women and 36 percent for men, and the infant mortality rate is the nation’s highest. For years, Pakistani militants have used the lawless area to initiate assaults against Pakistan’s government and against United States-led forces in Afghanistan.

Since 2001, the Pakistani military has launched 10 operations against militant strongholds in the region, most recently in 2013 in North Waziristan. The offensives have displaced almost two million people, according to figures from the United Nations refugee agency and the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, as homes, schools and hospitals have been turned into hide-outs by militants and meager civic amenities have been destroyed.

The Pakistani Army says it is now spending millions to repatriate displaced people, rebuild infrastructure and earn residents’ good will. But many residents still view the soldiers as occupiers, and militants continue to pose a threat.

Parliament is considering a proposal to merge the war-torn and neglected tribal areas with the adjoining province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. That would allow the people in the tribal areas to become full citizens of Pakistan for the first time. But the plan has become a divisive issue among those favoring reform, with some political parties opposing a merger and calling for the tribal areas to become a separate province instead.

Simbal Khan, a security analyst and nonresident fellow at a think tank, the Center for International Strategic Studies, in Islamabad, said she was skeptical that the protests would lead to real change for Pashtuns.

“All this movement you see, it is pre-election mobilization,” Ms. Khan said, referring to national elections scheduled for July.

“It doesn’t portend to become a genuine Pashtun uprising,” she added. “Political parties and other groups want to pick up issues that resonate with the public, and this march provides them a platform. This is just politicking.”

]]>http://dawatmedia.com/asia/in-pakistan-long-suffering-pashtuns-find-their-voice/feed/0Chinese Muslims told ‘hand over Qur’ans and prayer mats or face harsh punishment’http://dawatmedia.com/world-news/chinese-muslims-told-hand-over-qurans-and-prayer-mats-or-face-harsh-punishment/
http://dawatmedia.com/world-news/chinese-muslims-told-hand-over-qurans-and-prayer-mats-or-face-harsh-punishment/#respondFri, 29 Sep 2017 18:50:59 +0000http://dawatmedia.com/?p=1259DUBAI: The Chinese government has launched a crackdown on Muslims in the Xinjiang territory in northwestern China – ordering copies of the Qur’an and prayer mats be handed over, or face harsh punishment, Radio Free Asia has reported.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the human rights group, the World Uyghur Congress said people in several regions had been notified that all Uyghur people must hand over all religious items related to Islam – including copies of the Qur’an and prayer mats.
The information was also broadcast across social media network WeChat, instructing people to hand the items in to government authorities.
The government has targeted Qur’ans in the region for the last five years because it is claimed the holy book contains “extremist content.”
The clampdown is part of the “Three Illegals and One Item” campaign targeting what the Chinese government considers “illegal” religious items owned by mostly Muslim Uyghurs.
The Uyghur Human Rights Project Director Omer Kanat said: “The new religious regulations demonstrate how Xi Jinping’s administration is founded on division. In Xi’s China loyalty is demanded and not earned. Ethnic minorities, dissidents and people of faith present a challenge to Beijing’s vision of unquestioned allegiance to the state. If these groups do not fall into line, their vilification creates a convenient scapegoat for a morally compromised government.”
Muslims are being told to hand over the religious items “voluntarily” to authorities, if any are found in searches then offenders will face harsh punishments.

]]>http://dawatmedia.com/world-news/chinese-muslims-told-hand-over-qurans-and-prayer-mats-or-face-harsh-punishment/feed/0Message to the world from Mohammed, a Rohingyahttp://dawatmedia.com/world-news/message-to-the-world-from-mohammed-a-rohingya/
http://dawatmedia.com/world-news/message-to-the-world-from-mohammed-a-rohingya/#respondSat, 09 Sep 2017 20:43:03 +0000http://dawatmedia.com/?p=1214

‘Humans are all the same, religions does not make us different … we are all human and all born equal.’

Mohammed Soye [Katie Arnold/Al Jazeera]

by

Mohammed Soye, 33, comes from Buthidaung town in Rakhine State, Myanmar, which he fled 10 days ago.

I was a farmer in Buthidaung township, just like every other Rohingya there. We did not have the right to work or the right to education so we could not get jobs in the police, military or other smart offices. We had to work on the farms, or collect bamboo from the forest.

It was a hand-to-mouth existence, somehow, we survived even though we did not have any freedom – we just got through life, one day at a time.

Two weeks ago, the military and the local Buddhist community came into our village, started shooting at us and setting our houses on fire, one by one. My brother was shot in the side of his face and died there. The rest of us had to run, otherwise, we would have been killed as well.

We did not know where we were headed, we just kept walking for 10 days until we finally found Bangladesh.

My mother is 80 years old, paralysed and suffers from asthma, so I had to carry her the whole way. We crossed three rivers by boat while the rest we did on foot. Sometimes, we would come across the military who would start shooting at us and sometimes we would sleep in the forest where there were lots of wild animals.

So, there were many dangerous obstacles but determination kept us moving and eventually we crossed the border. I feel a lot more comfortable now that I am in Bangladesh. Back home, we could end up dead at any moment. Here, our life is safe.

But still, Bangladesh is totally new for us – we don’t know anything about the country, we are illiterate, and we don’t know what we are supposed to be doing here. So if peace returns to Myanmar, we would prefer to go back home, somewhere familiar.

I know the whole world is watching these images of the Rohingya crisis, yet no one is pressuring the Myanmar government to stop the violence being committed against us. Of course, they don’t actually want to find a solution, otherwise, we would have seen it already, but why aren’t international governments putting pressure on them.

My message to the world is that humans are all the same, religions do not make us different. Buddhists have flesh and blood, just like we do. So if they live peacefully and freely in Myanmar, why can’t we – we are all human and all born equal.

As told to Katie Arnold in Unchi Prank new refugee camp in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

The plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya

An estimated more than 270,000, mainly women and children, have fled to Bangladeshin the last two weeks as a result of indiscriminate violence against civilian populations carried out by the Myanmar army.

The UN and other human rights organisations have warned that the mass exodus following killings, rapes, and burned villages are signs of “ethnic cleansing“, pleading for the international community to pressure Aung San Suu Kyi and her government to end the violence.

]]>http://dawatmedia.com/world-news/message-to-the-world-from-mohammed-a-rohingya/feed/0Pakistan and Iran have always cooperated against Baloch national interestshttp://dawatmedia.com/asia/pakistan-and-iran-have-always-cooperated-against-baloch-national-interests/
http://dawatmedia.com/asia/pakistan-and-iran-have-always-cooperated-against-baloch-national-interests/#respondSat, 09 Sep 2017 20:34:21 +0000http://dawatmedia.com/?p=1209Pakistan and Iran have always cooperated against Baloch national interests:

Hyrbyair Marri London:

Baloch leader and the head of Free Balochistan Movement Hyrbyair Marri said in a statement from London that the occupying states of Iran and Pakistan have always closely cooperated against the Baloch national cause in order to counter and eliminate the Baloch freedom struggle. He said that both states were equally involved in occupying Balochistan and committing gross human rights violations against the Baloch people, and in the past, both the states have jointly fought against the Baloch nation. However, due to the current religious, political and economic ambitions in the region the relationship between Iran and Pakistan has become temporarily strained. Because of this tension, both states have adopted dangerous policies against the Baloch national struggle. Both occupying states, through their infamous intelligence agencies, are trying to pit pro-freedom organisations against each other on both sides of occupied Balochistan. In some places, they have succeeded, in others, their evils designs have failed. Mr Marri said, regardless of whether you are struggling against Pakistan or Iran, if you get support from one of those occupying states and use it against your own Baloch brothers, who may be under the occupation of the other state, it is as if you are chopping off a part of your own body. The Baloch nation will suffer as a result of Baloch organisations fighting against each other. The civil war of Iraqi Kurdistan is a clear example, where the KPD and PUK have become proxies of neighbouring nations, Kurds were killed at the hands of their fellow Kurds. In three years’ time, more than eight thousand Kurds were martyrs and many people are still disappeared.

Baloch leader Hyrbyair Marri said in his statement that Balochistan is the land of the Baloch nation, the Baloch nation consists of various schools of thought, including Muslim, non-Muslim, secular, religious, socialist and moderate people, and all these people despite thinking differently and having different ideas can still play a vital role in the Baloch freedom struggle. It will be unwise to reject any Balochs’ struggle because of their different thinking and different ideologies. How is it possible that millions of people would follow one school of thought? He further added that the imperialist forces divided Balochistan into different parts and then divided each part into different areas, and now some narrow-minded Baloch organisations want to divide Balochistan and Baloch nation permanently, on an ideological basis – like how the German and Korean nations were divided only on an ideological basis. If this political attitude prevails then an independent Balochistan will be divided on the ideological and regional basis, where instead of gaining political power through the constitution and vote, religious leaders, socialists, atheists and tribal people will not hesitate to impose their ideologies on each other, to divide the independent Baloch state and nation furthermore. Hyrbyair Marri said, “The Baloch nation has never accepted the Goldsmith line drawn by colonial powers, and they will never accept it.” The Baloch political activists from both sides of occupied Balochistan can take refuge and live in any part of Balochistan. “If Baloch from Iranian occupied Balochistan takes refuge in Pakistan occupied Balochistan and vice versa, it does not matter, because Balochistan is one, and it is our shared country.” In fact, strategically planned appeal for asylum is not a danger to the Baloch national interest but accepting the artificial line (boundaries) and becoming mercenary soldiers of other states, and being used against the Baloch nation, endangers the entire Baloch national cause. In these circumstances, if activists from both sides of occupied Balochistan become proxies of their eternal enemies and work against each other, it will immensely damage the Baloch national interests. First, these two states will use Baloch against each other, and then after a minor improvement in their relationship, they will become allies and use the Baloch as a bargaining chip to please each other. Mr Marri said that freedom of any part of Balochistan will be the beginning of the independence of a United Balochistan, and that is why Baloch activists from both sides of occupied Balochistan should use their power and energy against the occupying states [Iran and Pakistan].

The North has tested a hydrogen bomb with “perfect success”, a jubilant newsreader announced.

SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea declared itself a thermonuclear power on Sunday, after carrying out a sixth nuclear test more powerful than any it has previously detonated, presenting President Donald Trump with a potent challenge.

The North has tested a hydrogen bomb with “perfect success”, a jubilant newsreader announced on state television, adding the device could be mounted on a missile.

The test was of a bomb with “unprecedently large power”, she said, and “marked a very significant occasion in attaining the final goal of completing the state nuclear force”.

The broadcaster showed an image of leader Kim Jong-Uns handwritten order for the test to be carried out at noon on September 3.

The announcement came after monitors measured a 6.3-magnitude tremor near the Norths main testing site, which South Korean experts said was five to six times stronger than that from the 10-kiloton test carried out a year ago.

Hours earlier, the North released images of Kim inspecting what it said was a miniaturised H-bomb that could be fitted onto an ICBM, at the Nuclear Weapons Institute.

Hydrogen bombs or H-bombs — also known as thermonuclear devices — are far more powerful than the relatively simple atomic weapons the North was believed to have tested so far.

Whatever the final figure for tests yield turned out to be, said Jeffrey Lewis of the armscontrolwonk website, it was “a staged thermonuclear weapon” which represents a significant advance in its weapons program.

Chinese monitors said they had detected a second quake shortly afterwards of 4.6 magnitude that could be due to a “collapse (cave in)”, suggesting the rock over the underground blast had given way.

Pyongyang has long sought the means to deliver an atomic warhead to the United States, its sworn enemy, and the test will infuriate Washington, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and others.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said ahead of the announcement that a test would be “absolutely unacceptable”.

South Korean President Moon Jae-In summoned the National Security Council for an emergency meeting and Seouls military raised its alert level.

Super explosive power

Pyongyang triggered a new ramping up of tensions in July, when it carried out two successful tests of an ICBM, the Hwasong-14, which apparently brought much of the US mainland within range.

It has since threatened to send a salvo of rockets towards the US territory of Guam, and last week fired a missile over Japan and into the Pacific, the first time time it has ever acknowledged doing so.

Trump has warned Pyongyang that it faces “fire and fury”, and that Washingtons weapons are “locked and loaded”.

Analysts believe Pyongyang has been developing weapons capability to give it a stronger hand in any negotiations with the US.

“North Korea will continue with their nuclear weapons programme unless the US proposes talks,” Koo Kab-Woo of Seouls University of North Korean Studies told AFP.

He pointed to the fact that Pakistan — whose nuclear programme is believed to have links with the Norths — conducted six nuclear tests in total, and may not have seen a need for any further blasts.

“If we look at it from Pakistans example, the North might be in the final stages” of becoming a nuclear state, he said.

Pictures of Kim at the Nuclear Weapons Institute showed the young leader, dressed in a black suit, examining a metal casing with a shape akin to a peanut shell.

The device was a “thermonuclear weapon with super explosive power made by our own efforts and technology”, KCNA cited Kim as saying, and “all components of the H-bomb were 100 percent domestically made”.

Actually mounting a warhead onto a missile would amount to a significant escalation on the Norths part, as it would create a risk that it was preparing an attack.

Failure of sanctions

The North carried out its first nuclear test in 2006, and successive blasts are believed to have been aimed at refining designs and reliability as well as increasing yield.

Its fifth detonation, in September last year, caused a 5.3 magnitude quake and according to Seoul had a 10-kiloton yield — still less than the 15-kiloton US device which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

The North Korean leadership says a credible nuclear deterrent is critical to the nations survival, claiming it is under constant threat from an aggressive United States.

It has been subjected to seven rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, but always insists it will continue to pursue them.

Atomic or “A-bombs” work on the principle of nuclear fission, where energy is released by splitting atoms of enriched uranium or plutonium encased in the warhead.

Hydrogen or H-bombs, also known as thermonuclear weapons, work on fusion and are far more powerful, with a nuclear blast taking place first to create the intense temperatures required.

No H-bomb has ever been used in combat, but they make up most of the worlds nuclear arsenals.

A Rohingya boy carries a child on his back and walks through rice fields after crossing over to the Bangladesh side on Sept. 1, 2017. (AP)

Reuters, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

Saturday, 2 September 2017

More than 2,600 houses have been burned down in Rohingya-majority areas of Myanmar’s northwest in the last week, the government said on Saturday, in one of the deadliest bouts of violence involving the Muslim minority in decades.

About 58,600 Rohingya have fled the violence into Bangladesh from Myanmar, according to UN refugee agency UNHCR, as aid workers there struggle to cope.

Myanmar officials have blamed group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army for the burning of the homes.

The group claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks on security posts last week that prompted clashes and a large army counteroffensive.

But Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh say a campaign of arson and killings by the Myanmar army is aimed at trying to force them out.

The treatment of Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing leader Aung San Suu Kyi, accused by Western critics of not speaking out for a minority that has long complained of persecution.